Stephanie Pearl-McPhee Quotes

It's only knitting and it's one of the few times in your life when there are no bad consequences to a mistake.

100 years ago, buying something you could make was considered wasteful; now making something you could buy is considered wasteful. I am not convinced this is a step in the right direction.

It turns out that I will buy any yarn, even yarn I will never use, if the store discounts it by more than 50%. Do not be tricked, not all yarn is meant to be yours. No matter how good a deal it is.

Advice for New Knitters
When choosing a pattern, look for ones that have words such as "simple", "basic", and "easy". If you see the words "intriguing", "challenging", or "intricate", look elsewhere.
If you happen across a pattern that says "heirloom", slowly put down the pattern and back away.
"Heirloom" is knitting code for "This pattern is so difficult that you would consider death a relief".

It is important for knitters to know two things about frogging: that cats are capable of this knitting action, and even seem to enjoy it and seek opportunities to do it; and that foul language is a normal, healthy accompaniment to frogging, whether it is you or the cat that accomplished the task.

I will continue to freak out my children by knitting in public. It's good for them.

imagine a scarf as an unlimited canvas

There are twice as many knitters as golfers in North America. Still, if you walk into any airport in North America, you can find a golf magazine but not a knitting magazine, even though you can't golf on a plane.

A half finished shawl left on the coffee table isn't a mess; it's an object of art.

The essay is one of my favourite forms of writing, and I feel like what's inside is really personal, more so than with shorter pieces.

Really, Joe? Really? You freaking think so?

Ribbing, moss, seed, and garter are all balanced and combine the yin and yang of knitting

Did you know that there are $4,000 washing machines? Seriously. If a washer is $4,000 I want it to get the laundry out of my room and bring it back folded after it made me coffee told me it likes my hair.

A plain sock by itself is terribly boring, but it could score points by having a clever stitch pattern, or maybe by being made out of a very beautiful yarn that's an enchantment to work with.
(Sadly, it is still infuriatingly true that being beautiful without being clever is almost worth more points than being clever without being beautiful, but such are the rules of life and knitting-they are cruel, but there anyway).

With great effort comes great gratification.

Despite what we knitters know to be true, the non-knitting world somehow persists in thinking that a "knitter" looks a certain way. Most likely, this picture is one of an elderly woman, grandmotherly and polite, sitting in her rocking chair surrounded by homemade cookies and accompanied by a certain number of cats.
In reality, a knitter today is just as likely to be young, hip, male, and sitting at a "Stitch and Bitch" in a local bar. Several of today's best knitting designers are men, and a knitter is as likely to have body piercings as homemade cookies.
Despite our diversity, the tendency to be accompanied by a cat is an oddity among knitters that cannot be explained.

The first time you find yourself having a conversation about moss stitch with a group of people who aren't desperately trying to escape you ... it's like coming home.

Sweaters need to be imagined, dreamed over.

I am a person who works well under pressure. In fact, I work so well under pressure that at times, I will procrastinate in order to create this pressure.

Once in a while, I bump into a knitter, and we have a lovely conversation. But if you figure out the number of people who know me and the people who don't, it's really a small number.

The rules of Canadian engagement say that if we encounter a celebrity, we have to pretend we're not encountering a celebrity.

Knitting is a boon for those of us who are easily bored. I take my knitting everywhere to take the edge off of moments that would otherwise drive me stark raving mad.

Achieving the state of SABLE is not, as many people who live with these knitters believe, a reason to stop buying yarn, but for the knitter it is an indication to write a will, bequeathing the stash to an appropriate heir.

SABLE- A common knitting acronym that stands for Stash Acquisition Beyond Life Expectancy.

When confronted with a birthday in a week I will remember that a book can be a really good present, too.

If you were ever dumped after knitting a guy a sweater, consider the possibility that the problem was with the sweater, not you. The recipient probably took one look at the thing, imagined a lifetime of having to pretend to like (and wear) this sweater and others of its like, and saw no choice but to flee into the night

In through the front door, Once around the back, Peek through the window, And off jumps Jack. - A RHYME TO TEACH CHILDREN TO KNIT

Just because something is fun doesn't mean it's a waste of time.

I will resist the urge to underestimate the complexity of knitting.

I will always buy extra yarn. I will not try to tempt fate.

When you are knitting socks and sweaters and scarves, you aren't just knitting. You are assigning a value to human effort. You are holding back time. You are preserving the simple unchanging act of handwork.

As long as there has been knitting there have been battles about it. There are self-declared "yarn snobs," who frown on using anything but natural fibers; "gauge snobs", who wouldn't be caught dead with chunky yarn; and "experience snobs", who claim you can't declare yourself a real knitter until you abandon novelty yarns. The truth is that the knitting world is a tiny metaphor for the real world. It takes all kinds.
I will not allow myself to feel bad if someone disapproves of my knitting. I will also resist the urge to stuff his mailbox full of chunky acrylic fun fur at 3:00 am.

You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance. - RAY BRADBURY

It took me years and years of trial efforts to work out that there is absolutely no knitting triumph I can achieve that my husband will think is worth being woken up for.

You know you knit too much when ... You take knitting to a wedding, in case there's a little time before the bride comes down the aisle. Double points if you are the bride.

Everybody tells me that they would love to knit, but they don't have time. I look at people's lives and I can see opportunity and time for knitting all over the place. The time spent riding the bus each day? That's a pair of socks over a month. Waiting in line? Mittens. Watching TV? Buckets of wasted time that could be an exquisite lace shawl.

It is some kind of miracle that all knitting is constructed of only two stitches: knit and purl. Sure, you throw in some yarn overs, and sometimes you knit the stitches out of order, but when it really comes down to it, knitting is simplicity. The most incredible gossamer lace shawl ... the trickiest aran ... a humble sock ... each just made with knit and purl.

The number one reason knitters knit is because they are so smart that they need knitting to make boring things interesting. Knitters are so compellingly clever that they simply can't tolerate boredom. It takes more to engage and entertain this kind of human, and they need an outlet or they get into trouble.
... knitters just can't watch TV without doing something else. Knitters just can't wait in line, knitters just can't sit waiting at the doctor's office. Knitters need knitting to add a layer of interest in other, less constructive ways.

I think my personal minimum score for anything I'm thinking about doing
knitting or not
is about a seven on the interest scale. If something's scoring a five, like a movie, then I need to add at least two points of knitting to do it for me to be able to hang in.
If it's something gripping, like a conversation with a charming and entertaining friend, I may not need to add much knitting at all. If my friend scores a nine, I might only toss in a plain sock, with no patterning or anything, just round and round on autopilot while we visit. (I can only think of one thing I do with another person that really has no room to add any sort of knitting to, but let's not discuss it here.)

The people who think I'm famous are knitters. Most of my life, I'm wildly unrecognized.

It is a little known fact that much like birds, who can always find north, knitters can always find yarn.

The chances of running out of yarn on a project are directly related to the difficulty that you will have getting more.

The best reason for a knitter to marry is that you can't teach the cat to be impressed when you finish a lace scarf.

You don't knit because you are patient. You are patient because you knit.

We're the only species that invents all of this stuff to make our lives easier-like a car so that we don't need to walk-then invents something else to take the place of it, like running on a treadmill.

I make a habit of setting aside some time each evening to take out my knitting and work quietly on it, happily relaxing. I believe that it prepares me for sleep and washes away the cares of my day.
I will consider that intarsia, or Fair Isle with three or more colors in a row, prepares nobody for sleep and cursing loudly while flinging knitting around the living room is about as far away from soothing as you can get.

Sometimes, people come up to me when I am knitting and they say things like, "Oh, I wish I could knit, but I'm just not the kind of person who can sit and waste time like that." How can knitting be wasting time? First, I never just knit; I knit and think, knit and listen, knit and watch. Second, you aren't wasting time if you get a useful or beautiful object at the end of it.
I will remember that not everyone understands. I will resist the urge to ask others what they do when they watch TV.

I will not let the non-knitters of the world decide how normal I am.

Five things I'd rather do than swatch for my new project
1. Get a spinal tap.
2. Scrub the bathtub after all three of my daughters have come home from "Sandbox day" at the park.
3. Babysit two-year-old triplets while simultaneously diffusing a bomb.
4. Bathe a cat.
5. KNIT MY NEW PROJECT.

I do know that there isn't ever going to be a time when there aren't any knitters.

Your average knitter, obsessed as we are with the art form, is quickly going to begin producing far more in the way of warm things than are needed by even an arctic-bound knitter. Knitting breeds generosity, true ... but perhaps in a hurry to avoid burying ourselves in hand-knits. There are only so many scarves one knitter can use.

It is pure potential. Every ball or skein of yarn holds something inside it, and the great mystery of what that might be can be almost spiritual

Some knitters say that they buy yarn with no project in mind and wait patiently for the yarn to "speak" to them. This reminds me of Michelangelo, who believed that every block of stone he carved had the statue waiting inside and that all he did was reveal it. I think I've had yarn speak to me during the knitting process, and I've definitely spoken to it. Perhaps I'm doing it wrong, or maybe my yarn and I aren't on such good terms, but it really seems to me that all I say is "please" and all it ever says is "no".